raison d'être
by Sweethearted
Summary: not sure what the title means bt it sounds cool lol. yeah so this is a story about my oc and the cast of skulduggery. nnot rly sure abt parings, bt it shld be fun. or something. i hope. also my shift key's busted. alas, alack.
1. chapter one

March 16, 2012.

* * *

Her name is Marrilace Amethyst Suzie, and she is the most fantabulously awesome person you will ever have the infinite joy and honor of meeting, unless you don't meet her, in which case she is the most fantabulously awesome person you will never have the infinite joy and honor of meeting.

Or something.

Firstly, she's pretty. She is really, really pretty, though she's actually really modest about it. Next to her, any of the Classical Venus statues would look plain.

Also, they'd look pretty much dead and creepily pale-skinned, but that's because they're statues and also their paint has worn away.

So yeah. Marrilace Amethyst Suzie is fantabulously pretty. She has short-long-short platinum blonde/sunrise pink/apple purple hair that is really tidy and choppily cut. She has amethyst purple eyes (like her name) and everyone's jealous of her looks.

And she has a really great body. Remember those statues we were talking about? Yeah. Sure, that tends towards the fat and the flat-chested by modern standards, but it's rather obvious that she was born in the wrong era anyway.

She's always plugged into her headphones which are crimson in color and go pretty damn fantabulously with her hair. Sometimes it's music which she doesn't favor so much because she's a musician herself and she keeps getting distracted by technical dissection, analysis of what the artist has done that she would do differently, so a lot of the time it's audiobooks.

Today, it's Skulduggery Pleasant, and as the schoolbus rattles and jerks along, she is listening to the words of Derek Landy whilst gently clutching the hand of her best friend in the whole world ever.

Said best friend is Black Malisse (isn't that a clever name lol), and Black Malyss is, quite honestly, _cool_.

Like, not Marrilace-cool. No one is quite that cool. But Malisse is pretty cool.

She's not hot like Marrilace, and she's definitely not pretty. But she's got something. Maybe it's the way that her joints stick out in her tiny little limbs that are actually normal in terms of bone-size and just pathetically thin in terms of what should be covering that bone but isn't. Maybe it's her complete and utter lack of breasts, lack of voluptuousness, the gaunt-pathetic-skinny that screams out at you when you're looking at her. Maybe it's her clothes or her makeup or her piercings. She has quite a lot of piercings.

Whatever it is, though, Black Malisse is _cool._

And at this very moment, she is swallowing down bile because she hasn't eaten in sixteen hours and also because she's dizzy and hungry and doesn't much like the bus, which is really very crowded, and she also really doesn't like all the looks she's getting, the ones that mark her out as a freak and weird and twisted, the ones that start with her bones and don't leave, and she feels a bit lonely, even though she's holding her friend's hand, or maybe especially since she is.

She doesn't make a sound.


	2. chapter two

May 29, 2012.

* * *

Her name is Marrilace Amethyst Suzie and the weird thing about her is that she can't read.

It's not that no-one has ever tried to teach her. They have, many times over. She just can't pick it up. The letters rearrange themselves into pictographs of immense elegance and beauty, or they dance and scamper about like ants or they invert and tilt and bleed into each other. She's tried languages other than English, like Hindi and Chinese and Hebrew, but the same thing happens.

She holds that the words are intimidated by her loveliness and thus dare not make themselves apparent without beautification, but really, she secretly thinks there's something wrong with her. She doesn't want to, because she knows that thinking negatively leads to actual negative repercussions, but there you have it.

On the other hand, Black Malyss can read. She is _good_ at reading, and languages, and all kinds of written-down things. Where Marrilace is incredibly auditory, though, where music flows from her like so much carbon dioxide, Malisse is tone deaf.

But yes. Black Malisse is good at languages, and so she is tracing the words for _love_ in as many languages as she knows it in (fifteen) on the inside of Marrilace's hand with the calloused tips of her fingers. She is straining to hear the sounds leaving Marrilace's headphones. It appears to be an audiobook.

Under the pretext of listening along, Malyss rests her head against her friend's shoulder, feeling flesh and bone and the warmth of all that is real in her life. Marrilace giggles, and tightens her grip on Malisse's hand as Malyss begins her cycle of languages again for the third time.

The chapter ends, and Malisse forces herself up, her head pounding with pain and her stomach twisting with hunger. _What's wrong?_ Marrilace signs with her hands, having pushed her headphones off her ears and gently massaged the aforementioned appendages.

_Didn't eat lunch, _Malisse signs back. _Or dinner. Or breakfast._

_Poor you,_ signs Marrilace. _Another diet?_

_She's put us all on detox_, answers Malyss, referring to her mother, who has long crossed the line between health-conscious and anorectic. _We get nothing but lemon water for the next two days. And supplements. But not too much lemon water._

_You'll end up like Springheeled Jack if you don't eat, _Marrilace notes._ Come over to my house after school for a meal?_

_Allah be praised, yes. Please._

_Excellent. I've made scones._

Malisse's hands are shaking as she signs her answer. _Have I told you how much I love you?_ she asks, meaning it in a lot more ways than one.

_Yes, _signs Marrilace, meaning it in exactly as many ways. _Of course you have._

_Good_, signs Malyss, grinning weakly and biting her tongue to keep from collapse.

_I love you too, you know?_ Marrilace signs. In response, Malyss hugs her. She hopes that her jittering from hunger and fear and exhaustion is hidden by the movement of the bus, and Marrilace pretends it is.


	3. chapter three

July 1, 2012.

* * *

Marrilace makes her own bento boxes every evening that precedes a schoolday, in the time after she finishes her homework but before she consumes her dinner. They tend towards the cutesy in terms of appearance, though they're actually fairly well balanced as far as nutrition goes. They're also actually edible, which is not something to be taken for granted when her family and food are concerned.

Today, she's brought kinoa with a furikake blend of dried plum, fish and seaweed that she bought from a Japanese food fair last month along with one-and-a-half carefully sliced apples. She puts a few spoonfuls of the kinoa and several slices of apple onto the lid of the box, and then she pushes the box to her friend. "Hold on, I'll get the chopsticks," she says softly. Malisse smiles her thanks.

"You should take more," she notes quietly when Marrilace hands her her eating utensils. Marrilace has gotten used to carrying two sets around. "You shouldn't be hungry because of me."

"Please," Marrilace says, rolling her eyes. "I had breakfast. Loads of it. And you kind of definitely didn't."

Malyss knows that Marrilace doesn't eat much of anything for breakfast, gets her first real food-based energy boost at lunchtime, but she just nods and says _thank you_ because she's too hungry to really argue.

In silence they eat, and despite the discrepancy in portion size, they finish at the same time – partially because Malisse is eating as quickly as she can, feeling hungrier with every mouthful but the last few, and partially because Marrilace is spending a little more time watching her friend than eating. "How can she manage all this?" she asks idly when Malisse is finished, has cleaned her hands and is gulping down lemon water.

_She isn't human and has no natural compunction to eat. She also has no stomach._ Malisse has switched to sign language, is rolling her eyes as she answers.

_How can she force it on you too, though?_ It's a question that Marrilace asks often and Malyss has still found no good way to answer.

_Hell if I know_, Malisse answers dismissively. _Thank you so much for the food, in any case. Ready for class?_

_Yeah. There's still some time yet, though_, Marrilace signs after a quick glance at her watch. _Want to start walking?_

_I don't think I could stand to listen to them talk a minute longer_, Malisse signs by way of explanation, referring to their schoolmates, who are scattered about the cafeteria and chattering at some volume as they eat. _It's painful trying not to follow their conversations._

_Okay. _Marrilace smiles._ Let us away, then._

They hold hands as they walk through the corridors, not conversing but sound in the knowledge that they were seeing the same things in the world, and Malyss is once again tracing words onto Marrilace's palm and wondering if Marrilace knows what they are, what they mean, at once hoping that she does and that she doesn't.

She does.


	4. chapter four

March 1, 2013.

* * *

They sit next to each other in class. It makes Marrilace feel safe and Malyss comfortable. Things were a bit harrowing in the time before they took up Signed Exact English, when Marrilace had stared at all the work put before her and her eyes unfocused and she started crying because nothing made sense, when the teacher had to repeat the question four times at least before Malisse could even begin to understand it, but now that they have each other, it works out.

It's probably cheating of some kind. The teachers should probably care more. But the fact is that the girls only help each other enough to scrape by at the best of times, and come exam time, it all falls to pieces anyway. Their desks are split up then so Marrilace tends to leave the room having written nothing at all, and Malyss panics, jitters, and all her cleverness runs from her mind. She writes, but she knows it's rubbish even as she writes, all confabulation and conceit.

And Malisse goes home and the results get back and her mother screams at her and she goes up to her room and stares at the ceiling and wishes for food she won't get any time soon and Marrilace's parents fuss and worry and ring up the teachers while Marrilace sits in the living room with her viola and saws away until her fingers are bruised and the tears have blocked her vision again. She isn't disturbed when she's in this state, because no one would dare to go near her apart from Malisse, and god knows she's not in any position to help.

But life goes on and then they're back in school and they muddle through somehow and being together goes towards filling in the gaps left by everything else. Not all the way, but it's enough. It has to be.

_So. New science teacher. Should be interesting. _Having unpacked her notebook and arranged her pencils, Malyss has turned her attention back to her friend. They are alone in the classroom for now, though their teacher has been in, as evidenced by the bag left on the desk.

_Yeah. Totally a pity about our last one, isn't it?_

_It's maternity leave, not death._

_I guess. _Marrilace smiles wryly. _They kind of sound as bad as each other to me._

_Yeah. Hey, deduce the new teacher for me._

_When are you going to get over this Sherlock phase of yours?_

_Skulduggery's a detective too._

_Guess he is, at that. Okay. It's a femme-to-feminine presenting person. Right handed. Forgetful and disorganized, but good at handicrafts. Drinks a lot of coffee. Lives with a parent or some other non-romantic relation. Catholic, either Irish or likes the culture. Short. Hasn't been working very long, but pretty old, which points to either a protracted time studying or illness. Did I say right-handed?_

At this point, the teacher walks in with a cup of coffee in hand.

_Oh my God, it's totally Clarabelle._


End file.
